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Overlooking the Tom river and facing out westwards towards Europe this monument stands testament to those Siberian's that fought in Russia's Great Patriotic War. The orchestral music that often blares from speakers along the perimeter adds to the experience and the blazing flames make a mid winter visit possible.
At the end of Lenina Prospect.
Google map: tinyurl.com/yjk4qca
I went on Peter's walking tours last April having read information about them before leaving. This was the best tour I have ever taken. The guides are incredibly knowledgeable and informative.
The tours take you around St Petersburg using public transport and take groups to unusual sights (we visited an apartment block with art installations and a large bomb shelter) as well as lots of the expected destinations. They even tailor make the tour to suit the group and will happily throw in something extra at a walker's request.
A relatively new blog from someone who is based in Moscow and has a great 'take' on the city.
One good touristy thing to do is to try and see/hear the choir of monks who give performances in the Tranfiguration Cathedral in the Kremlin. Their singing is absolutely beautiful and may well leave you slightly dewey-eyed.
The Tranfiguration Cathedral in the Kremlin
This is probably the most comfortable place to stay in Uglich and, like most of the main attractions, is close to the Kremlin. The hotel also has a small cafe.
Uspenskaya Square
tinyurl.com/nz6wdb
Though the factory is now closed, you’ll still find ex-workers behind little stalls near to the Kremlin who must have secreted a good deal of the stock about their persons before they became redundant. Apparently they assemble the watches at home and now sell them at still reasonable prices, ladies watches being a good deal more prevalent than gents. I bought one of these in 2000 and it’s still going strong. The name Chaika means ‘seagull’ in Russian and was adopted after being used by the first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, as her call-sign.
Stalls outside the Kremlin
Moscow's oddest museum, in a hollowed-out apartment block. Miles away from artefacts in glass cases, the chaotic, agitprop presentation attempts to tell the story of the poet's life while simultaneously create the experience of walking around Mayakovkiy's head in full creative flow.
It's the deepest fresh water lake in the world. It's 1.6km deep and has 1/5th of the worlds fresh water in it. Home to fish and seals that are only found there. The surrounding countryside is all beautiful forests. Listvyanka itself is tiny and the only place you can get smoked omul, the best known of the tasty local fish.
You can catch a marshrutka (minibus) or regular bus to Listvyanka from Irkutsk. Irkutsk is on the Trans-Siberian train route and well worth stopping off at for the lake alone.
baikal.irkutsk.org
It is a vegetarian restaurant and health food store in the heart of Moscow. Hidden on Kutznetsky Mostly it provides a hippy breathing space from the glitz and glamour of Tverskaya's high street cuisine. Last time I visited it, there were two options: crusty cafe or refined restaurant dining. Preference is determined by price. I went for the crusty and it was good. Although after spending a year living out in Moscow and missing the chickpeas, any place like this would seem Heaven on Earth. It is well worth checking out though.
Address: 11 Ul. Kuznetsky Most
Metro: Kuznetsky Most
WWW: www.jagannath.ru
St Petersburg is a great literary city.
Walk the streets of Dostoevsky, like in Crime and Punishment, following the footsteps of Raskolnikov. There are even special tours which visit the places. See the fading yellow buildings, looming large, driving to madness. The squalor and poverty he personally experienced is reflected in his novels. There is also a Dosteovsky museum where he used to live.
Walk alongside the mighty Neva, with it's granite embankments, so glorified by Pushkin. Or the Bronze horseman depicting city founder Peter the Great looming large over the city. Pushkin house is a museum.
Walk down Nevsky Prospekt.
'All powerful Nevsky Prospekt' said Gogol in his sketch bearing the name of this famous street.
Imagine yourself in Petersburg to be in a Gogolian nightmare. This is the little man pittted against the big artificial city with it's structures of power and insane obedience to rank and status.
Watch the sheer artificiality and pre planning of old Petersburg as Tsar Peter dragged Russia forward with a European capital as a window on the west, the facades, ensembles, baroque and the squares. Built on cold rationale as a complete antithesis to the Russian soul. As Dostoevsky said--'the most abstract and artificial city on earth'
Anna Akhmatova was a Soviet poet, who variously lost husband and son to the Gulag camps. You can visit her apartment.
Petersburg- city of words. This is a map of the city with literary quotations from people associated with it.
mtblog.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/St_pete_map_web-1.jpeg
www.saint-petersburg.com/museums/dostoyevsky-memorial-museum.asp
This is a local tour company who provide everything from walks around the Kremlin to weekends away at the 'Golden Ring' towns. The guides are knowledgable, English speaking locals and it's a very friendly and reasonably priced service.
Venedikt Yerofeev's brilliant novel weaves drunkenly around Moscow's environs.
If travelling anywhere within Russia, use the train. The vast distances covered mean that all trains (apart from the local suburban ones) are sleeper trains. If you want privacy you can book a four or two berth cabin, but I recommend the third class (platzkartny) carriages – they are open with four berth alcoves, and are a great way to meet people. You could be sitting with all kinds of people, from babushkas taking their little grandkids on a trip, to young guys on their way to start their military service. Most train journeys are at least several hours long, so you will get to know your fellow passengers quite well, and it makes the journey much more interesting. Make sure you stock up on plenty of supplies for the journey, as much to share as for your own consumption, although there is often a restaurant car (quite good quality actually) and at most stops there are people selling all kinds of food and drink such as crisps, fruit, homemade meat cutlets, pierogi.
Rostov is a beautiful town on the Golden Ring route on the shores of lake Nero; the Kremlin is a mass of onion domes, coloured tiles, surrounding secluded courtyard gardens, towering above surrounding traditional wooden homes and dusty streets. It's incredibly picturesque with beautiful architecture, artwork and a small museum. It's a world away from the Kremlin in Moscow - well worth a visit.
Rostov Veliky town centre
Peters walking tours in St Petersburg are fantastic - tour guides are knowledgeable and friendly. They take you off the usual tourist trail, visiting places that aren't in your guide book, visit local cafes and use public transport to get about. These things all add to the experience and give you something that most Brisitsh tourists wouldn't be able to achieve for themselves. The tour guides tailor make the tour to suit customers and give lots of historical and political information as well as answering questions
I stayed at the Comrade hostel in Moscow last April. It's a tiny hostel, but most of them are. I'm led to believe that hostels need to pay fees to the Mafia, so people run really small places that look like apartments with no signs outside. This is no exception and doesn't have a sign outside, just a tiny hostelworld/bookers sticker on the door.
The guy who runs the place is incredibly helpful, however, and booked our train tickets for us - a difficult feat for people who don't speak Russian and was happy to give advice. He even took some of the other guests out for lunch and on a train journey day trip. The place is clean, but basic, the real draw are the staff (really just one guy - terribly I can't remember his name).
The location is fantastic - about five minutes walk from Red Square.
Comrade Hostel - Maroseyka street 11, 3rd floor, 101000
It's offered by lots of restaurants in Russia now and it has no Russian translation - they use the English phrase 'business lunch'. You get three courses - salad, soup and main - served up in less than half an hour. There will be a few choices for each course, so for the main you might choose chicken or beef or fish with rice or potatoes. It's speedy, fresh, light and a new-ish Russian institution.
Popular in restaurants in central Moscow and in other city centres
An engaging city, this one; a real junction for eastern and western Russia. We hit a cold snap in mid-Feburary and it was well below zero, but we had a great combination of snow and bright sun which really suited Ekat (as locals call it).
Main sites include the Church of the Blood, controversial and expensive, very recently built on the site where the Romanov family are thought to have died in July 1918. Walk through the exhibition space into the main interior of the church, which is a very tall open, bright space. It's an eyeful of icons and colour, and depending on the time of day you may hear the chanting of Russian Orthodox priests echoing around the tower.
Walking tours are great as the city is quite compact and full of interesting sites. Wear layers if it's winter! One pair of gloves might not be enough.
Ekaterinburg is a business and travel hub and has a growing number of very good Russian and Japanese restaurants as well as English and Scottish pubs and a microbrewery (with eating place) called Tinkoff.
BA flies direct to Ekaterinburg from London. The airport is 15km from the city centre and has domestic and international terminals, linking Ekat to most major cities across Russia.
Ekaterinburg used to be called Sverdlovsk and sometimes you still see the old name written on signs.
The memorial site for the Battle of Stalingrad. It's a hill just outside the city and it's probably the eeriest, most moving place I've ever seen. You follow the path up the hill through trees and statues, then through a pantheon with an eternal flame and the inscribed names of 7200 soldiers who died here (only a handful of the total number). At the top is the statue of Mother Russia, 72m tall with an 11m stone sword. It's the immense scale that is so stunning, plus the way it speaks to you about power as well as tragedy. We were all silent by the time we reached the top. I've seen no memorial on that scale anywhere else in Europe. The other thing that struck me is how special the memorial is to the city of Volgograd, because so much of the city was destroyed. Because the statue is so tall, you can see it from many points in the city - if you arrive by train from the east, you can't miss it.
3km north of the city centre
Take the tram to the Mamaev Kurgan stop or a taxi to Mamaev Kurgan
I think there are also guided tours available - the hotels in the centre of Volgograd will have information
Hotels in Yaroslavl are often rather faded affairs, but this one is modern, has good facilities but of course is more expensive than its traditional counterparts. It’s located in the city centre and is also close to the station.
55 SVOBODA STREET
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